Messages - lmitzel

AUG 86, NC 63Alexis Jones 14 pts, 8 rebs in 19:00Justice Edell 14 pts, 7 rebs in 23:00Clare Kramer 10 pts 8 rebs; Scooter Lopez 4 stls, 5 assists; Sadie Roberts 4 stls and a block.NC got 12 pts and 6 assists from Mayson Whipple. By the way, the Cardinals made 64% of their 2FG att. Since I criticized their rebounding last time, I'll note that they rebounded well in this game.

Excuse me, I'm going to go bang my head against a wall.

They hit some nice shots in the process of being fouled last night and had a decent share of good looks inside. I don't even want to criticize their three point shooting because their looks were pretty good overall. It was just one of those nights (Whipple was 2-10 from deep, Siarra O'Neill 0-9, Michaela Reedy 0-8). If they hit even a few more of those Augie doesn't run away with this one. I thought the Cardinals still gave up too many second chance opportunities, but I'd still say the poor shooting night combined with 21 turnovers is what did them in.

Mayson's 12 point, 6 assist night gave her 946 points and 334 assists in her career. The assist mark is third most in program history. She would have been second all time and a lock for the 1000 Point Club were it not for her knee injury last year. Jamie Cuny came and asked me after the first quarter last night how many points Mayson needed to reach the mark. I told her it was sixty-some. Alas.

The 4-5 matchup with Elmhurst getting home court but having lost both matchups to Augie is intriguing, but I wish I could say the same for that 3-6 matchup. I mean no disrespect to Carroll, considering they beat NCC twice and had a nice bounceback from an awful 2016-17 campaign, but the optics of a 5-11 team making the conference tournament is... not ideal.

I don't know about the rest of you, but a pair of 8-8 teams getting in isn't anything resembling a "participation trophy" as was brought up when the news first broke. It would also give NCC and Wheaton, both bubble teams at the moment, another opportunity to beef up their strength of schedule and win percentages before adding in a result or two versus RRO's in Augie/IWU.

As is, I could potentially see NCC sneaking into the 8th and final Central region spot from the Wheaton win, and beating Wesleyan last night can only help their case going into the weekend.

Of course, my preference is for the Cardinals to win twice on the banks of the Muddy Mississippi this weekend and get into the tourney through the front door.

I would also prefer this. I mean, they won as the 4 seed last year, and while no 3 seed has won the tournament to date, how fitting would it be to complete the cycle the last year of the four team format?

The men's tourney will be in Rock Island instead of B'town (IWU lost at home to NCC; Augie trailed Elmhurst at home for nearly the entire game, but pulled it out at the end).

Since ONLY the women's tourney will be in B'town, does that mean Fri-Sat after all?

Yes, the Thursday semis plan is a contingency. The women will be Friday/Saturday in Bloomington. Congratulations to the Titans on a phenomenal regular season.

NCC closed out its season with an 86-63 loss to Augie in Naperville. Iíll go through the box more in the morning, but to indicate the night it was: the Cardinals hit just five of 41 threes tonight.

A year after going 14-11 and tying for fifth, the Cardinals lost 20 games. They havenít been that bad since I took a seat at the scorerís table, but from talking briefly with Michelle Roof, theyíve got good pieces coming in.

I look at the argument of "States The BeltTM Has Been In" from the lens of, "If you won ItTM, it went back home with you barring a situation like either winning ItTM in Vegas or on the first day of an NCAA Tournament weekend before handing ItTM over."

This also doesn't factor in potential road trips to schools in states where The BeltTM hasn't taken up residence with a victor, which would require a little deeper research. It also doesn't count excursions taken by BeltTM holders, such as Concordia-Moorhead hypothetically crossing the Red River over into Fargo, which had I been aware of The Belt'sTM existence when it was there I would have sent my cousin who lives there to try and take it on pain of Raiders of the Lost Ark face melting... though he or my uncle may have welding equipment to help protect from this.

Anyway, I like how most of the territory covered is contiguous, with exception of a few of the outposts (Washington, California, Texas, and Maine because as far as I could tell no New Hampshire schools have held The BeltTM.

But yeah, that Vegas scenario fascinates me.

I hereby declare lmitzel the "Official D-III Championship BeltTM Cartographer" and grant all rights and privileges inherent to the title. Which is none.

It's going to be tough on whichever teams reach the CCIW tournament final, contending for the AQ -- four games in 7 days -- Saturday, Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Fitness could play a big part.

IWU'70

Wheaton's regular season is done. They don't play tonight. 4 games in a week is a lot but I can't believe these players aren't in shape by now.

On the other hand, I don't think having the ladies play Tuesday and then Thursday-Saturday is really great. These are students by the way. Why not Friday games at 2 and 4 for the ladies and then 6 and 8 for the men? If the Carthage ladies win, will they stay over and miss a day of school? If not , that's a lot of travel for them from Wheaton or Bloomington.

I'm assuming they wanted to keep everything in the evenings, and I'm sure the missed class time argument got brought up when this contingency was created.

I would assume that yeah, the Lady Reds would stay in Bloomington if they advanced to the title game. If it were in Wheaton, I'd assume they'd go home. A 2 hour drive isn't as bad.

Do we know whether non-conference games against conference opponents will count toward a team's non-conference strength-of-schedule? For example, Amherst, Williams, and Wesleyan each play one another home-and-home, but only three of those six games count toward the NESCAC standings. My working assumption is that such games would not be considered for ncSOS, but that's just a guess. Dave or Pat, any word from the committee on this?

How exactly does a conference opponent qualify as a non-conference game? Sorry for my ignorance.

I assume by mutual consent of the 2 teams with notification of/approval by/acknowledgment from the conference office depending upon conference bylaws. It happens not infrequently in the "island" areas of D3 (ASC, NWC and maybe the SCIAC) and occasionally in the WIAC for football.

This sounds like a scrimmage, hopefully these kind of games have no effect on rankings. Really screwy, since I believe part of the RPI ranking takes into account home vs away wins. Winning on the road is "worth" more, I believe.

RPI has no bearing on NCAA Tournament selection or regional rankings. The home/road difference does get weighted in SOS, but not based on results.

Since I don't know if it was completely answered... there is NO "once ranked, always ranked" in Division III -across the board. The women and men have the last two rankings count only. There are no differences in that rule in basketball and I believe across DIII.

The ONLY difference in the criteria between men and women is that the men utilize the home/away weighted measure on their SOS while the women do not. That is a criteria that is left to each individual national committee. There are four or so in DIII that use it.

So the possibility of Wheaton dropping out entirely would pose a problem for NCC. All CCIW teams still in the picture would probably profit from a combination of quarterfinal upsets and Platteville (and probably even UWSP) dominance in the WIAC Tournament.

Q, I saw you Pool C analysis. Is your position on Wheaton based on winning @ Carroll and then winning one game in the CCIW Tourney? If they do that, it seems like you think they are on the right side of the bubble? Am I seeing that right?

It's where I have Wheaton right now. But yes, to stay in this position I think Wheaton has to win at Carroll and then on Friday in the CCIW tournament. Because the teams all around the Thunder on my list will probably win 2 more games. With the margin for error being tiny, it's important for Wheaton to keep pace in the final week.

I do think Wheaton gets in with 2-1 through Saturday night. In this scenario, though, Wheaton would be at the mercy of "bubble burster" upsets. When you're in that #15 or below range you just have to hope there aren't a ton of upsets.

Wheaton's resume has a lot going for it with SOS and RRO.

It looks as if the general feeling is that NCC doesn't have a chance for a Pool C bid. But, NCC has the same record as Wheaton and the same conference mark. Plus NCC is 2-0 head to head. SOS appears to be similar. Does it all come down to record against RRO? I'm not complaining, just trying to understand.

Pretty much every metric that the NCAA uses for both regional rankings and Pool C bids favors Wheaton, unfortunately.

Metric

NCC

Wheaton

Win %

0.696

0.708

SOS

0.538

0.550

RRO

2-4

4-2

Head to head results are in a way part of the RRO for North Central, but Wheaton's got the edge with some nice wins (Whitworth, IWU, Augie) that NCC can't claim. If the Cardinals beat the Titans tonight that'll narrow the gap. It won't impact the regional rankings this week but it'll help with the final set.

Now, if Wheaton also loses to Carroll tonight, then falls on Friday as well with NCC winning its semi we might get a nice little reversal. But that said, North Central would be towards the bottom in the Central region and would have to wait a while to get to the table in all likelihood, which is a problem.

I look at the argument of "States The BeltTM Has Been In" from the lens of, "If you won ItTM, it went back home with you barring a situation like either winning ItTM in Vegas or on the first day of an NCAA Tournament weekend before handing ItTM over."

This also doesn't factor in potential road trips to schools in states where The BeltTM hasn't taken up residence with a victor, which would require a little deeper research. It also doesn't count excursions taken by BeltTM holders, such as Concordia-Moorhead hypothetically crossing the Red River over into Fargo, which had I been aware of The Belt'sTM existence when it was there I would have sent my cousin who lives there to try and take it on pain of Raiders of the Lost Ark face melting... though he or my uncle may have welding equipment to help protect from this.

Anyway, I like how most of the territory covered is contiguous, with exception of a few of the outposts (Washington, California, Texas, and Maine because as far as I could tell no New Hampshire schools have held The BeltTM.

Rebekah Ehresman is your latest CCIW Player of the Week winner, averaging 16.5 points and 8 rebounds in a pair of Titan wins last week. Amazingly, she's the first Titan to win the award since Molly McGraw back in November. In the time between, nine different players from six different schools have won at least once.

Millikin and North Central are the only schools in the conference who didn't have a player win the award this season. NCC's last winner was Mayson Whipple back in 2016, and Millikin's was Alyssa Saklak back in 2015.

Illinois Wesleyan's Alex O'Neill is your latest CCIW Player of the Week after averaging 14 points and 6.5 rebounds in a pair of Titan wins. O'Neill is the second Titan to win the award this season (Brady Rose three times is the other).

Sounds like Swider can be a nice addition for the Thunder.30% 3FG shooting is probably a tiny bit above average for the women's game. Last time I researched it (not this season), I think the average was 28%.30% on threes is the equivalent of 45% on twos, both certainly tolerable.If a team or individual makes 1/3 of their 3FGs and 1/2 of their 2FGs, I think she/they are doing quite well. Expectations for shooting pcts on the mens' side are likely somewhat higher.

I'd be interested to see if those numbers are still in the same ballpark. Looking at the NCAA's website, the median percentage from deep this season is 29.2 percent. I would assume the mean would be in that neighborhood as well, but the NCAA doesn't have that immediately accessible.

I've always viewed three point shooting from the lens of men's percentages in terms of expectations, but it makes North Central's shooting percentages back in the System era that much better.

I mean, in a vacuum, shooting in the mid to upper 20's from deep is bad, but at the same time when you consider the volume NCC shot from deep these years, it made up for it. The fact that those percentages line up with being around the average kind of reinforces the idea that sheer volume can in fact make up for it.